Free Republic

Yamana Gold dropped 15% in one day after news of a charge taken for Brazilian operations.

Our investing strategy is the mix of our own personal financial needs plus expected future developments in the economy.  So the buzz (on these threads) is that the biggest up-coming economic/employment changes impacting our investment choices in the next week or two are the midterm elections, Ebola, deflation, and the war on terror.  We'll share our thoughts here on what we expect, and let's rate our expectations in terms of what we've been having up til now on the 'click-to-enlarge' graphs.  On the right margin we got 5-yr stock index performance for a back drop on our own personal expectations. ...

This past week saw upside reversals across the board coming out with prices holding steady in spite of the hammering we had over the past month or two.  [click pix to enlarge]The October metals rally held on to its gains, in fact market prices show gold's just about clawed back to break-even for 2014.  That's said, metals' role in price trends ahead is become increasingly controversial (re Gold And Silver - Financial World: House Of Cards Built On Sand) even while many see a bright tomorrow with other commodities (We Maintain Our Outlook For Higher Prices For Commodities).  Stocks.  OK,...

The Democrats' midterm prospects took a beating this week as concerns over the Ebola virus and a jittery economy churned up countless grim headlines and darkened an already-dissatisfied national mood. Republicans on Capitol Hill, who have long-charged the administration with mismanaging crises, have been quick to pounce on the ebola issue, saying President Obama's team has not been aggressive enough in the face of the threat. Meanwhile, a plummeting stock market has hit the half of the adult population that owns shares directly, or through retirement accounts and other investment vehicles. The stock slide also undercuts the White House’s preferred...

Senator Elizabeth Warren, always outspoken on the tension between Main Street and Wall Street, took shots Sunday at a system she said is "rigged" against the little guy. In an interview in Salon, Warren, who has said she doesn't plan to seek the 2016 presidential nomination, said fellow Democrats including President Obama have not done enough to help consumers. On President Obama: Warren praised Obama for the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a federal agency aimed at enforcing consumer protection laws. But she told Salon that "there has not been nearly enough change" in the wake of the...

Money.  Investing.  Freerepublic.  Here are the top 10 reasons that us FR investors want to participate in the current FReepathon: 10.   Gold, silver, stock indexes, and bond values are all cr@pping out these days anyway... 9.    The FReerepublic is a proven and solid force for (among other things) sound national fiscal policy; we need that force stronger now more than ever. 8     We benefit from these threads personally.   Equity as a legal doctrine thus requires our compensatory donations. 7.    Economic realism: there's no free lunch. 6.    Market realism: you get what you pay for. 5.    Donations are necessary for continued maintenance/loss reduction of desired FR...

We don’t like to concede that a primary cause of the financial crisis was a Wall Street compensation system that rewarded executives, bankers and traders for taking big risks with other people’s money without holding them the least bit accountable. And because we don’t like to discuss such things in polite company, it is certainly unsurprising that six years later, not a single fundamental aspect of how Wall Street pays its top people has changed. The incentive system that handed out millions of dollars in bonuses to bankers and traders who packaged shoddy mortgages into securities and sold them as...

The Wall Street Journal ran an article recently exploring why the Peak Oil Predictions had not come true. Written by Russell Gold, the Journal’s senior energy reporter based in Austin, Texas, who himself released his first book called “The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and Changed the World”, the article was an excellent walk through the ups and downs of the oil industry going back even to the late 1800’s. For example, did you know that John D. Rockefeller’s partner in Standard Oil, John Archbold, said, “I will drink every gallon (of oil) produced west of the...

 Investment & Finance Thread TOTAL Market Crash Wrap-upJeesh!  The bond bubble, just popped (Bond market may be more fragile than you think),stocks'n'metals are in the terlet, all while unemployment plunges below the big 6!   Big deal.  This so-called 'recovery' may be a boom time for all the elites on Main Street but those of us middle class working stiffs on Wall Street know better.   On Friday's gold and silver punched new lows and now weekend trading's putting them clearly into prices from four years ago.   As for stock indexes we got IBD announcing Thursday that stock trends are now...

The stock market ditched Wall Street years ago. The masters of the universe, like the Giants and Jets, now scrimmage across the Hudson River in New Jersey—their trading these days done almost entirely by computers piping algorithmic playbooks into a fortress of servers in Mahwah and other competing exchanges nearby. The small squads of human traders who remain on the floor at 11 Wall St., the New York Stock Exchange’s Teddy Roosevelt–era headquarters, are (for the most part) just playing fantasy football. Yet just as the Big Apple’s football teams kept their New York names after wedding themselves to the...

Hat’s off to my friend, co-host and boss, Chris Faulkner. This past Monday, the Dallas Business Journal announced their 2014 Who’s Who in Energy list. Under the Oil and Gas tab, it read the following: James L. Poston, Aruba PetroleumT. Boone Pickens, BP Capital Chris Faulkner, Breitling Energy I have to admit, I was pretty proud when I read that Monday afternoon. I’ve been working with Chris on radio programs since December of 2013, and immediately I became aware of his incredibly sharp, witty and fast-thinking mind. These days, he and I may do up to 7 hours of oil...

Hat’s off to my friend, co-host and boss, Chris Faulkner. This past Monday, the Dallas Business Journal announced their 2014 Who’s Who in Energy list. Under the Oil and Gas tab, it read the following: James L. Poston, Aruba PetroleumT. Boone Pickens, BP Capital Chris Faulkner, Breitling Energy I have to admit, I was pretty proud when I read that Monday afternoon. I’ve been working with Chris on radio programs since December of 2013, and immediately I became aware of his incredibly sharp, witty and fast-thinking mind. These days, he and I may do up to 7 hours of oil...

Investment & Finance End of 2014 Q3 into Q4 Thread Edition Comodities Stock Indexes    now   3 Mo. Chg.   Annualized return     now   3 Mo. Chg.   Annualized return  gold $1,220.26 -7.2% -25.9% S&P500 1,982.85 1.2% 4.7% silver $17.71 -16.2% -50.7% DJIA 17,113.15 1.7% 7.0% oil $512.66 -6.2% -22.6% NASDAQ 4,512.19 2.4% 9.8% U.S. $ $85.62 6.7% 29.8% Rus2k 1,119.33 -6.2% -22.5%  Here's what happened with the third quarter investments:  Looks like the dollar soared (so much for Fed printer devaluations), metals tanked (so much for safe havens), and while big cap. stocks have done best this past quarter the current...

In the fairy tale "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves," Ali Baba, a poor woodcutter, is in the forest when he hears a group of robbers approaching on horseback. Afraid, he climbs a tree and hears one of the men say, "open sesame." A door opens in a rock and the men go in, the door shutting behind them when another says, "close sesame." When they leave, Ali Baba climbs down and approaches the rock. He says, "open sesame" and it opens for him. Inside he discovers jewels and gold, which he takes, becoming rich himself. Jack Ma is the...

Investment & Finance Week in Review (Thread -Sept. 21 edition)Prices finally picked a direction and went for it  --topping a super week w/ metals collapsing, an FOMC meeting, Scottish Vote not to do anything, new IRS rules, stocks leaping, and the Alibaba IPO hype,  --and in the lull before the end of Q3 and beginning a new earnings season.  One thing at a time; metals finally broke in to newer lower levels as support folded,    ...and stock traders made up their minds deciding to respect the 50-day moving average support and rebound prices into what IBD calls "market in...

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: I got people... People who know that I am a tech aficionado are asking me, "Rush, what's Alibaba, and do I need to be concerned about it?" Alibaba is the Chinese, the ChiCom Amazon, and it is going through its IPO today. It just became the world's largest Internet business and close to the world's largest business, period. It's gonna end up being even bigger than Walmart today. Jack Ma, you can see him. Drudge features a couple of pictures of Jack Ma. He founded Alibaba on the front page of the Drudge Report, Yahoo owns 23%...

On the eve of the vote for Scottish independence, Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch explained that the election is merely a symptom of an ”anti-establishment groundswell” sweeping through the Western world. On Friday Murdoch spoke about the impending vote with Fox News’s Neil Cavuto. “I think there’s meaning in this, and I think it goes beyond Scotland,” he said via phone. “There’s a great anti-establishment groundswell which is seen in this vote in Scotland. You’re seeing it here in Britain in the anti-European party, whose one single issue is to get out of Europe. And I think you’re seeing it...

Capital Market Update; Investment & Finance Thread (Sept. 14 edition) In a phrase it looks like everything's beginning to bust loose for stocks, metals, bonds --something here for everyone!   Stocks chalked up another distribution day last Friday as the S&P nudges toward the famous 10-week moving aveage that serves as a floor in the good times and a ceiling in the bad.  Traders are also noticing that over the past week or two up volume was slight while down volume was strong.  Like maybe some kind of consensus or something, at least for the short term.  Remember however...

Day before yesterday we were checking out this BEA map of the U.S. that was colored/labled by GDP and it got us on to the redstate/bluestate divide.   Naturally (as expected) small gov't low tax policies generally flowed with growing economies but what snagged us were the anomalies --Alaska did so poorly yet West Virginia soared.   Seems we can overcome that by ourselves and get all the state numbers for GDP from the BEA along w/ employment states by state from the BLS --and then toss them into online mapping websites (I used iMapBuilder Online). Got to just love this info...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)In an exclusive interview Wednesday with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren slammed former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for accepting a multimillion-dollar job with a Wall Street investment bank shortly after leaving Congress. "This is wrong," Warren said in regard to Cantor's new role as vice chairman and managing director at Moelis & Co. "People work in Washington and, man, they hit that revolving door with a speed that would blind you." She went on to claim that banks hire politicians like Cantor "not because they bring great expertise and insight, but because they’re selling...